(Translation: "Wandering swallow, as you sit there on my balcony each morning, singing to me your tearful song, what is it you are trying to tell me in your language, wandering swallow?")
This brings out the difference between the alternating rhyme (a, b, a, b) and the couplet (c, c), as well as the morphology of the stanza.
. . . . . . .
In reading the lines over and over again to work out the rhyme scheme, the children spontaneously begin to catch the tonic accents. Their readiness in this respect is a matter of common observation. In fact, in ordinary schools, the teachers are continually struggling against the "sing-song" developed by children in reading poetry. This "sing-song" is nothing more nor less that stress on the rhythmic movement.
On one occasion, one of our children, a little boy, had been spending some time over a number of decasyllabic lines. While waiting in the corridor for the doors to open at dismissal time, he suddenly began to walk up and down "right-about-facing" at every three steps and saying aloud: "tatatá, tatatá, tatatátta," right-about-face, then "tatatá, tatatá, tatatátta." Each step was accompanied by a gesture in the air with his little clenched fist. This tot was marching to the verse rhythm, just as he would have marched to music. It was a case of perfectly interpretative "gymnastic rhythm." His gestures fell on the three tonic accents of the Italian decasyllable, the right-about marked the end of the "verse"—the "turn" in the line, which he indicated by "turning" himself around to begin over again.
When the children have reached such a stage of sensory development, they have no difficulty in recognizing the tonic accents. For this purpose, we have prepared sheets with poems written in a clear hand. The children mark with a neatly drawn accent the letter on which the rhythmic accent falls. The material should be systematically presented. We found from experience that the children first discover the accents in long lines made up of even-numbered syllables (parisyllabic lines), where the accents recur at regular intervals and are clearly called for both by sense, word accent and rhythm. We were able to establish the following sequence for various Italian lines, which present a graduated series of difficulties to the child in recognizing the accents:
1. Decasyllables: example:
S'ode a déstra uno squíllo di trómba
A sinístra rispónde uno squíllo:
D'ambo i láti calpésto rimbómba
Da caválli e da fánti il terrén.
Quinci spúnta per l'ária un vessíllo:
Quindi un áltro s'avánza spiegáto:
Ecco appáre un drappéllo schieráto;
Ecco un áltro che incóntro gli vién.
(Manzoni, La battaglia di Maclodio.)
(Translation: "A trumpet call sounds to the right; a trumpet calls answers to the left; all around the earth shakes with the charge of horses and men. Here a standard is broken out to the breeze; there another advances waving; here a line of troops appears, there another rushing against it.")
2. Dodecasyllables: example: